The worst accident happened in 1990, when an oxygen generator on board the Russian Mir space station malfunctioned and was set ablaze. So at 4:55 p.m., Tuesday, inside an insulated container on a ship miles above the Earth, NASA began the largest intentional fire ever set in space. The Cygnus will remain in orbit while the rest of data from the experiment – including video of the burn – is downloaded to NASA computers on Earth. The fire was so hot that it was melting metal.”The fire eventually consumed the entire oxygen canister and burned itself out, but it raised the temperature inside the space station to 100 degrees and filled the air with smoke. That knowledge will help NASA refine its computational models for space fires, choose better materials for building spacecraft and develop procedures for fighting fire.

Source: National Post June 15, 2016 21:00 UTC